Speakeasy Photos
MUAH: All Self
Models: Danee Badeaux, Melody Payne, Mary Hodges
Location: Sacramento neighborhoods

I recently divulged my coming-of-age dance story. Today, I will share how discovering Blues Fusion impacts my existence.

Human touch heals. Touch is vital to survival. Physical connection and emotional connection don’t necessarily accompany one another. Touch can feel empty. Touch can be loaded. Touch can be neutral. Emotions and presence can be absent. Emotions can be experienced across vast distances void of touch, they can overwhelm. Emotions can be kept in check. During partner dance, all of these can happen over and again in one night.

Long hours and thousands of dollars in marriage counseling led to the discovery a few months ago that my husband has Aspergers Syndrome. More appropriate counsel is being sought as we devour related literature, but the gist of it is that while we have an excellent business partnership, emotional depths are shallow or absent. Partnered dance provides a space for emotional connection. Seven years of marriage I operated under ill advised counsel that feelings are unreliable, that if I acted a certain way then the feelings would follow. Last July my unmet emotional needs became so great that I could deny them no longer. I felt I would rather die than continue an existence concentrated upon right action with complete disregard to emotion. Knowing not what else to do, I cried out to my higher power. “Do something!” I spoke with my husband of my inner experience and that I felt I needed to seek connections with others, sensing what I wanted could not be found in our relationship months before the AS discovery. The following night we went Blues Fusion dancing the first time, and as told, I met Gravy. Both seem no coincidence, for after years of not being able to connect with my higher power in a meaningful way, I am rediscovering connection anew. I venture to say my spiritual existence and experience are ever shifting, relationships and time are rallying something inside of me closer to the life I want to live.

When I dance, I am utterly present. When I am not, it becomes obvious with a quickness. I’ve said before that in dance we are at once present to ourselves, the music, the floor, and partner. Occasionally, I have been unable to find my center. I confessed such a thing to an experienced dance ninja months ago, and he offered me to ground myself in him. I thought such a thing taboo and that in order to dance the primary connection needed to be with myself, yet as I let go of whatever was tripping me up that night, I got out of my own way and abandoned myself to share a higher experience. Where I couldn’t connect with myself, the floor, or the music, this lead invited me to ground myself in him. Abandoning what didn’t work for me that night, I took a deep breath and surrendered to this man. He reached out and found me. He cradled me into a harmony I could not on my own discover that night. Following dances enjoyed a newer, more present me and I no longer felt at odds with the elements.

Oft times a dance is just a dance. Yet some connections allow us space to find our footing, to discover ourselves anew. Dance need not hold these depths, but they are possible. I partner dance, because it is fun. I enjoy connecting with other people in conversation requiring no words. My experience is not another’s and connections are not always matched. May we admit that in life something guides us which surpasses logic?

Images in this post by Samuel Nesbitt Photography
Model/Dancer: Chris Schultz
Set location: Firehouse 5
MUAH and Wardrobe: Self

I spoke months ago about wanting to do a circus shoot, or at least to have my parasol opened and balancing on a train track, then lamenting that Shane legitimately refuses to shoot on tracks as it is illegal. Well, these tracks in Grass Valley are in all certainty out of commission. What will we come up with next? Many ideas brewing over here at The Pinup Pursuit. We are teaming up with creative minds and conjuring some real treats and fresh spaces.

Soundtrack for today’s post: Bullet Train by Stephen Swartz Featuring Joni Fatora
More images from this shoot day:
Pushrods & Pedal Cars Clothing Co.
This Train
Thinking To Get Wet
*parental advisory*
I Keep Going To The River To Pray


Speakeasy Photos
MUAH: Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson

I learned partnered Charleston and six count East Coast basic as a fourteen year old at the end of swing’s late nineties Y2K revival. A boyfriend and I attended a dance sparking a hunger to learn more. Six weeks of classes, and I was bouncing Charleston rhythms as I readied for school in the mornings in front the mirror or in front of the fridge, down school halls; I worked hard at mastering the basics. Later in the Spring, I joined a group of garage teens who enjoyed Aggie swing. I carried what little I knew into new relationships and we danced around my mom’s living room. Then dancing disappeared from my life for about three years until I joined a summer course in Ballroom dance. The Waltz was graceful and full of beauty, but remained in the classroom. Two years later, in a personal life crisis of identity and adulthood, I found myself at University hungry for a hobby. A class mate told me about social swing dancing in Sacramento and handed over the phone number of a gal I could call for more information. That phone call felt more to her as an interrogation and at one point she actually asked me if the purpose of my call was for a school report. I was anxious to try something new, by myself no less, but an event called a “Lindy Exchange” was happening that weekend, and while dancing was normally only Friday nights, this weekend would be Friday, Saturday and Sunday day and night. Perfect opportunity to check it out, I phoned a ballerina acquaintance and we hit the town that night. Wow! To give you an idea of where I was coming from, I am the girl who went to blows with her boyfriend months earlier because I was too frightened to drive to Old Sacramento alone to attend an evening wedding. Hitting the town for a new experience and navigating parking were by themselves major feats of pushing myself to grow. Growth is worth its efforts. We walked into the Temple of the Eastern Star ballroom, my heart leaping as high as the thirty foot ceilings as I felt myself to be at “one of those dancing clubs” in the film Swing Kids. Did anyone else ever dream of that? Smiles could not help but plaster my face as we graced the double staircase to the third story ballroom. I nearly fainted at the sight of a full hopping crowd, some dressed in vintage, as Barbara Morrison and her band played their hearts. The room pulsed together in rhythm and the energy was incredible. We wanted to dance, but had never heard of Lindy Hop. I had enough follow skills to hack it out on the floor, each partner generous with me that it was my first time out social dancing. I wanted to learn more like a baby wants his milk. My friend had had her fill so the next night I ventured out to the lesson without her. Saturday night the Masonic Temple equally impressed: a hall danced by the decades, live band hammering out tunes, dancers in sync with their play, sweat seeping vintage inspired clothing, and bodies in a whole other world. Where had this space been all my life?! I pulsed with the room, singularly jumping high as I could to see into the jam circle eagerly watching and clapping the best dancers swing out. I wanted to be here, and nowhere else. This was my dream, I was living it!

Weeks unfolded into hours of pacing my three foot dorm room carpet between writing papers and studying. I had a hobby. My body had a purpose which aligned with sound and people. I was in community, and still me and not many words needed to be spoken save, “Yes” to the question, “Would you like to dance?” I had untold conversations and people connections that need not use an audible voice. I learned to use another part of my brain to move in motion with another to the point where my body took over and I no longer needed to count it out. The rhythm took hold as an unspoken mantra: this is how we groove.

I had a culture, only dreamed about and flirted with as a young girl, now in living colors. Until the day I broke my knee. The dance brought me up, the dance brought me down right onto the hardwood and cracked my knee cap as an egg. Game over. Or not, I kept my spirits up during the weeks turned months of healing by attending dances and watching others. I married and flirted with a dance scene in another city as I rebuilt atrophied muscles. We found ourselves pregnant which led to four years of not social dancing on account of illness, sleep deprivation, and tiny human care. Second child six months old, we began social dancing again. Moving closer to family made having an adult social life possible. Oh the joys of rediscovering social partner dancing, and yet my older body did not take kindly to the jumping and high energy of Swing. Upon urging of friends, we finally ventured to the Blues Fusion scene one late July night.

Blues Fusion, the mix of any and all dance you could possibly experience. Music varies yet similar slow tempos allow a sleep deprived parent to go out and dance every single song. Occasionally dances turn into long hugs and in our afraid-to-touch-each-other society, that’s okay. Human touch heals. This scene has emotionally held me countless nights. Lyrical dance tells stories, exploring emotions that may or may not be our own. At times emotions crop up through the music and movement the fore-brain otherwise hides or denies. Dance is different for everyone and to each his own, but next post I will share my experience and what it means to me. If social swing dancing indulged my inner Swing Kids film dream, then Blues Fusion embraces hours of another: Dirty Dancing.

Images in this post by Samuel Nesbitt Photography
Models/Dancers in order of appearance:
Justin Alonzo
Chris Schultz
Andrew Sutton
Set location: Firehouse 5
MUAH and Wardrobe: Self